Police find two cars packed with bombs in holy city

Security forces in Iraq have arrested two men after finding two cars laden with bombs, amid warnings from clerics that Saddam Hussein loyalists or al-Qaeda members would strike over the next two days.

The men were arrested after cars they were travelling in were found loaded with explosives, said security spokesmen outside the Masjed al-Kufah mosque in Kufah, 180 kilometres south of Baghdad.

"We found the seats [in one car] were not well designed and had new covers. This raised our suspicion and we searched the seats and found them filled with bombs," a policemen told AFP.

"Yesterday we seized the same kind of car filled with bombs," he said, adding that that car was driven by two men from Yemen. The two men detained yesterday were from the southern Iraqi city of Basra, he said.

The remains of Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer al-Hakim, murdered in a huge car bomb in nearby Najaf on Friday that killed at least 82 others, were due to arrive in Kufah yesterday.

Inside the mosque, clerics were calling on loudspeakers for people to "open their eyes" because "Saddam Hussein's followers and al-Qaeda will try today or tomorrow to make large explosions" in Kufah.

Police were conducting vehicle searches at most street corners in the city yesterday.

Ayatollah al-Hakim's remains were expected to be kept in Kufah at the Masjed al-Kufah mosque, considered the oldest outside Saudi Arabia.

He was set to be buried in nearby Najaf.

Tens of thousands of mourners turned out in Baghdad on Sunday for the start of Hakim's three-day funeral procession.